Alien Squad Leader - The Soviet Armoured Fist rumbles on.

I was keen to get my Second Global War Soviet army back on the table again, so a game against Nick's Alien Enslavers at the club yesterday was just the ticket. This was a 200pt battle, so I got an opportunity to deploy my Super Heavy Tanks, unreliable experimental technology but packing a massive punch because of the Primary Weapons system on each tank.

The battle we were fighting was Breakthrough/Rearguard Action, Scenario 6 in the rulebook. I was the attacker, and to win I had to get two units across the table and exited. I'd played this before and managed a win, but I was less confident this time, because of the inherent unreliability of my tanks. Also, I was worried about the psychic powers of the Enslavers.

The table was set up with a river cutting it in two. Luckily I was able to reposition the built-up area nearest to the forest to give my troops some useful cover.

I had a plan, but it all depended on using my long-range firepower to whittle away at the Alien hordes. The Heavy Tanks were on my right and the Super Heavies on the left, with mobile rocket artillery and field artillery in the centre  to launch hopefully devastating barrages.

The infantry were always going to be secondary in my plans, but I deployed them on the flanks to prevent the Aliens from getting around and attacking my vulnerable artillery.

Supporting my armour I had a stand of Mechanical Scientists, inferior infantry defending Mechanics who could repair damaged vehicles.

The Alien Enslavers were a truly bizarre force. Giant tentacled brains. eldritch vehicles, fearsome-looking beasts and hordes of psychically-controlled Thralls.

Supported by floating heavy weapons, the alien tanks and infantry occupied the village on the Alien right.

My tanks soon began to hit their targets, causing damage to the Alien armour. The white figure is a Subject Telepath.

The Alien centre was packed with Thralls, but indirect artillery fire began to thin their ranks. Getting these out of my way was crucial to my plan.

I was also keen to drive off or destroy the Alien armour in the village. 

This force on the Alien right worried me. I didn't want to have to divert forces to fend them off, but I didn't want them coming over to my side of the river either.

I got my vehicles into cover as soon as possible. I didn't want my defensively weak mobile artillery destroyed by Nick's Beast of the Air.

My super heavy armour came under attack, sustaining hits, but my Mechanical Scientists were able to effect battlefield repairs and kept their threat very much alive. I also lost some infantry, but my core force remained intact.

One concern was my Sniper, who was generally unable to trouble the enemy, missing with about 80% of his shots. Re-education in the Gulags beckoned.

Slowly, the enemy forces were thinned out, but I was still not going to commit my forces to advance until they had overwhelming force. 

Finally, with the alien tanks on my right destroyed, the time came to get some troops over the river, my tanks sweeping aside the much-reduced screen of Thralls.

I was still worried by the Psychic threat, though and I concentrated my fire on the command stand on the hill.

These guys were also a concern. I took time to try and weaken them as much as possible.

My centre remained solid. both the indirect artillery and the tanks were causing damage to the aliens.

One tank was lost due to psionic attacks, but my advance continued. 

I ordered more armour to cross the bridge, once the aliens were weakened to such a degree that the threat was becoming negligible.

I sent my mainly-useless sniper into hand-to-hand combat against the Master of Thralls. Almost inevitably, he lost and his death meant that he wouldn't suffer at the hands of my NKVD goons in one of my dungeons.

However, this was just a minor setback as my armour and infantry poured forwards  to gain that all-important breakthrough, with two units leaving the table, with more to follow unopposed.

So, a resounding victory for the Soviet Armoured Fist. I am really beginning to like this army a lot. It isn't fast and it does suffer from unreliability, but The Stubborn characteristic means that troops don't suffer command penalties if pinned, so choosing to be Pinned instead of Falling Back makes a lot of sense.

The opportunity to re-roll shooting dice with tank guns upgraded to Superior Firepower is also useful. It gives you a second chance to score hits on targets you have missed with the first shot.

I've been the attacker twice with my Soviets now. I think that overall they are probably going to be a better defensive force, but they do offer an all-round threat from the massive firepower they can deploy.

A new army for Alien Squad Leader - Second Global War Soviet Confederacy

In ASQL V3.0 there are several new army lists. One set of armies that I liked the look of from reading the playtesting version of the rules was a group covering the "Second Global War"

The rule book has this to say about the Second Global War;

"The 2nd Global War occurred within an alternate timeline in the Earth's history, in which each side developed strange new weapons within their laboratories and workshops of war, some of which worked sufficiently well to put into production."

The rules go on to list five separate armies, three for the Allies (The United Kingdom of Albion, the Soviet Confederacy and the American Union) with a bias towards new technologies, and two for the Axis (German Occultists and Far Eastern Empire) with the emphasis on arcane knowledge and the supernatural serving the cause of creating genetically-enhanced super warriors. This is clearly a "Weird WW2" type of thing, which I reckon has a fair few fans and should prove popular.

The list that particularly appealed to me was the one for the Soviet Confederacy army. I just needed to decide how I was going to put this army together.

Of course, I could just have bought a load of WW2 Russian infantry, tanks, vehicles and artillery, but where's the fun in that? In any case, I already had an army painted up that could easily be used for this, once I'd rebased it onto 5cm square bases. All it really needed was some suitable vehicles.

The army I wanted to reuse was one of the first 15mm sci fi armies I ever bought, using Ground Zero Games Neu Swabian League miniatures. I really like these figures, they have a certain "look" that just appeals to me. Not too futuristic, but suitably different enough to work in a parallel Earth setting.

The other thing that I like about this army list is the number of tanks that can be used, together with the optional use of indirect fire rocket artillery.

So, I set about rebasing my infantry and collecting and painting some tanks and other vehicles. Finally, I've finished the job off and here are the results. First, an army general (the three figure base) and two political commissars;

Four bases of Green Recruits (inferior infantry), with three figures per base.

Four bases of "anti-tank guns", a.k.a Heavy Weapons;

Four bases of mortars, representing "field artillery", a.k.a more Heavy Weapons;

Two sniper bases (front) one heavy, one standard, one base of Mechanical Scientists (rear left) and a command base (rear right);

Four bases of power-armoured Battlesuit Wearers (I love these figures);

The next two pictures both show three bases of Veteran infantry and one Command stand;

Note that in all the above pictures there are a mix of weapons on each stand. This is just for aesthetic reasons,  they all count as having small arms (apart from the Heavy Weapons stands and one of the two snipers). The Mechanical Scientists are a specific unit that can repair broken-down Unreliable vehicles, unhappily a feature of these army 2nd Global War lists which reflects the experimental weaponry.

Now, here is the armoured fist of this army. First, we have three tanks (which can be upgraded to heavy tanks at the cost of +1 point). These are from Brigade Models;

Next two armoured transports with rocket launchers, from TheSceneUK. To save points, these could be downgraded to unarmoured trucks;

Next, also from TheSceneUK, two experimental super-heavy tanks;

And finally, from GZG, four stands of Light Vehicles in the shape of NSL hover-cycles.

So, I have now created a different kind of Human army, one with some plus points, e.g. stubborn infantry and commissars who can motivate the troops to advance and ignore Fallback dice rolls but also some negative ones. i.e. unreliable experimental technology and slow and unreliable vehicles and tanks.

I am looking forward to getting these onto the table at some point. I've clearly, as usual, got too many troops for a basic 150pt army, and even a 200pt one, but at least I have a lot of options here.

I am also wondering if, with a few suitable additions, I can deploy my Corporate Mercenary army as a Far Eastern Empire force. It looks like a distinct possibility.